Our Blog

The Snapshot: NFL Week 1 Review

Usage is really important for NFL DFS and is way more predictive of future success than raw production is. Which player would you rather roster the following week?

• Player 1: two targets, one reception, 87 yards, one touchdown
• Player 2: seven targets, four receptions, 63 yards, no touchdown

Player 1 ‘outperformed’ Player 2 in terms of fantasy points, but it’s much more likely that he simply got lucky and that Player 2 — the one with way more opportunities — will outperform him over the long run.

While I’m a fan of all of the tweets about single players getting a lots of targets or few rush attempts, it personally helps me to visualize the data in a single place. So in this space each week, I will look at both recent and cumulative snap, target, and rush data. For now, here’s Week 1. We’ll break the post into recent/cumulative data in a couple of weeks.

(Note: The graphs are interactive. Hover over for data.)

Snaps

A guy can’t touch the ball if he’s not on the field. Snap data is more important than a lot of people think. If 80 percent of success is showing up, then we want guys who actually show up on the field.

Targets

For targets we’ll use a pie chart, since players are competing for one ball on a per-play basis and there’s only so much of the pie to go around.

Rushes

Here’s the same visual representation except for rushing attempts:

It’s important to remember that market share percentages aren’t created equal: Terrelle Pryor owned a large market share of the Browns’ total targets — 26.92 percent to be exact — but he had only seven targets. It’s important to know both rate and totals: The player’s involvement in the offense and how the offense compares to other offenses in the league. Market share and total volume both matter.

Pass/Run Totals

Speaking of volume: Here’s a graph of Week 1 pass and rush attempts by team:

Wrapping Up

Today FantasyLabs contributor Joe Holka debuted his weekly piece The Forward Pass, in which he discusses notable usage rate trends. This piece can be viewed as a partner of that post: Here’s where you can view how market share is trending in a easy-to-see, easy-to-read way.